City's teacher shortage ebbs

Mayor Richard Daley on Wednesday touted a drop in the teacher vacancy rate in the city's public schools, crediting new policies and programs designed to get teachers into classrooms.

Nevertheless, the number of unfilled positions stood at 1,204 as of Oct. 1, officials said.

Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan, who appeared with Daley at a news conference in De Priest School on the West Side, said turnover is inevitable in a system with more than 27,000 teachers. And the supply of teachers with certain specialties, particularly special education, remains inadequate, he said.

"You never get to zero," Duncan said of teacher vacancies. "But we want to push that number down as far as we can."

The number of vacant spots this year is down from 1,468 last year and 1,604 in 2002.

"That means that more of our students began the school year in classrooms with full-time, highly qualified teachers instead of substitutes," Daley said. "A strong start will help improve performance for our students."

Substitutes and teachers working overtime cover classrooms that have vacancies, officials said.

In the last two years, 7,400 teachers have been hired, 2,000 of them from schools considered top universities in a ranking by U.S. News & World Report magazine, Duncan said.

A change in policy now allows principals to hire more teachers for the coming school year earlier than they previously did, reducing a practice in which they often waited until after the start of classes to try to fill vacant slots, Duncan said.

A summer fellows program, designed to give college education majors a taste of Chicago schools, and "alternative certification" programs, aimed at recruiting professionals who want to switch to teaching, have resulted in permanent hires, officials said.

Chicago's school system recently was awarded a five-year federal grant of $1.9 million to provide extra training and mentoring to teachers who have joined the ranks through alternative certification.

On another issue, Daley played coy about the possibility of a casino in the project planned for Block 37, the ill-fated Loop site.

Block 37's location is a good one, Daley said, but "I am not saying in or out. I am just saying it has to be part of this process." The site ranks "between 1 and 1,000," on the list of possibilities, he said.

A Chicago casino would require legislative approval in Springfield and a change of heart by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.